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Monday, July 23, 2012

Hope's Daughter - Melanie Cusick-Jones

Life should be simple for Cassie.

For the small population of Earth survivors who live on the Space Station Hope everything they do is planned and scheduled, down to the cyclical food menus, their roles in the station, even how many children they have.

Despite rigid controls directing her life, Cassie feels more out of synch than ever and worries she won’t find a place for herself within the station community. Perhaps that’s because she’s hearing things inside her head that can’t possibly be real. Or maybe it’s the regular elopements of her peers, heading off to a romantic future in the Married Quarter of the space station, whilst she’s never even been attracted to a boy – no matter how hard her best friend Ami pushes them at her. Then there are the odd questions her work placement partner Balik keeps raising. His questions are just as troubling for her as his distracting smiles and eyes that seem to see inside her.

As Cassie draws closer to Balik she finds that everything else in her life begins to shift. He tells her things that call into question the system they live within. She can't believe he is right, but at the same time she finds it hard to deny the sincerity of his ideas. Could there be a connection between Cassie’s problems and Balik’s questions? The truth will drag them both to a terrifying and deadly conclusion beyond anything they could have imagined.

I didn't really know what to expect going into this. I'm not usually a huge fan of the Sci Fi genre, but I am a big fan of the Dystopian genre and when done right sometimes the two genres meld together really well. Hope's Daughter was one of these times.

The pacing of the story was great, it didn't drag and it didn't rush events it had a nice gradual build that made the story that much more believable. I liked how Melanie built up the environment of the space station, you really get a sense of what life is like on the SS Hope, it was very easy to visualize and didn't have a generic feel to the background that you can find in a lot of other novels.

The plot was interesting and well thought out because while you learn early on that something might be off with the people of SS Hope you're never quite sure what exactly is going on as there is no predictable plot here and you are left discovering thing just as the character do. There is a lot of suspense that takes place throughout the story and it's paced out so well that it keeps you guessing and wanting to continue.

I loved the characters of Cassie and Balik. Cassie is easily relatable with her fear and concerns with how she fits in to her new adult life on the space station. She is also intelligent and strong willed, not the damsel in distress type at all. Balik is quiet intelligent character that always wants to answer the questions of how and why everything around him work and he leads Cassie to start questioning some of the things on the space station that just don't add up.

I had some theories about what was going on, and few that were somewhat close to what the big reveal was but the end still caught me off guard and wasn't what I was expecting. The end also left enough questions for me to look forward to the sequel. This was one of those books where I really want to say more about it but if I do I would probably give something away, so just read it then you will know what I'm talking about.